Faces by E.C. Blake Page B

Keltan?” she demanded. “You were at the camp. You were in Tamita. You were on the beach. Don’t you think maybe I know a little bit more about what the Lady of Pain and Fire—who shares my gift and earned her title
when she was the same age I am now
—has experienced, the burden she carries, than
you
do
?”
    Keltan’s eyes widened. “Mara, I didn’t—”
    â€œYou belong with the unMasked Army,” Mara snapped. She knew she was hurting Keltan, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. “I don’t. I never did. I never can. Go back and walk with your kind. And I’ll walk with mine.”
    She brushed past him and strode after the Lady as quickly as she could, closing the distance between them, Whiteblaze trotting, tongue lolling, at her side.
    Keltan didn’t follow her.
Good
, she thought. But already she felt guilty. She didn’t want to hurt Keltan. She didn’t want to ruin whatever had been between them.
But he shouldn’t have said what he said.
    She sighed. It wasn’t just in the heavy snow of the trail that she felt she was floundering.
    The Lady glanced at her as she caught up. “Mara, what is it?”
    â€œI don’t want to walk by myself anymore,” she said.
    The Lady looked behind them. Presumably Keltan was still back there, but Mara didn’t turn. “You are welcome, of course.” She did not ask Mara to tell her in more detail what had happened. She did not ask her if she had yet made a decision. She simply let Mara walk with her, in companionable silence.
    It was, Mara thought, exactly the right thing to do.
    But the walking itself was beginning to wear on her. The slope was unrelenting. The snow, even beaten down by Hamil and the other members of the Lady’s Cadre—the “human wolfpack”—up ahead, dragged at her feet with every step. “How much farther?” she asked after a while, panting along with the wolves, breath forming white clouds in the chill air. “To your home, I mean?”
    The Lady, despite her age, seemed unaffected. “We will see it from the top of this ridge,” she said. “Not from where we will camp tonight, I think, but in the morning, when we start down the other side. We will not reach it tomorrow. But the day after that . . .” She gave Mara a smile. “The night after next, you will sleep in a real bed, under a real roof.”
    Mara nodded. As they continued to climb, the Lady began to talk again, of inconsequential things: her own childhood, pleasant memories of growing up in Tamita . . . it all sounded exotic to Mara, for the Lady had been born under the reign of the Autarch’s father, and there had been no Masks then. The idea of adults freely mingling in the streets of Tamita with faces uncovered seemed unutterably strange, even after months with the unMasked Army and days with Chell’s sailors. She no longer blushed at the sight of an adult’s uncovered face, but it still seemed somehow . . . immoral.
    And yet, that was the future they were all working toward: the Lady, the unMasked Army, and Mara.
    But not Chell
, she reminded herself. For the first time in hours she glanced back. She saw Keltan, walking with Hyram and Alita, the latter two holding hands. She looked past those three to where Prella walked several ranks back, likewise holding hands with Kirika. She was glad they had found each other, too, even though . . . or maybe because . . . Kirika had almost killed Prella once. Right behind Prella and Kirika she saw Chell, walking with Captain March, who no longer had a ship to command, though at least he still lived, unlike his counterpart, Captain Gramm, who had died in the battle on the beach. On the other side of Chell walked a young man she didn’t recognize, though she had seen him on board
Protector
and knew he was an officer of some kind . . . a lieutenant,